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January is the month in which most of us try to shake off the excesses of the holiday season, be they material, financial or diet-based. Usually, this means healthier eating, at least a mental commitment to more exercise and a diligent paying down of credit card bills. But what if we applied this same austerity to our relationship with technology in 2015?The Telegraph has christened this the year of the digital detox. Design firmFjordis also on board, claiming in their 2015 trends piece that “a critical lens is being put on the use of our technology and addiction to it, as the shape and prices of our new habits become clear.”The Wall Street Journalis currently offering up tips for disconnecting and no less than Microsoft UK’s Chief Envisioning Officer ispromotingthe need to make our relationship to technology more mindful.

Tech naysayers are nothing new, of course, but the ubiquity of tech and the ways in which it’s enmeshed with our daily processes is. To rebel against a power loom that will usurp your job is a straightforward proposition. To disentangle yourself from social media and the forego the sense of collectivism and inclusion it facilitates or to go back to not knowing how many steps you’ve taken today after months of having that number blinking on your wrist is more fraught. There’s a good reason that this piece I wrote in late 2012 still racks up page views and why it spawned dozens of emails split between commiseration and derision. Our devices aren’t mere productivity tools or gadgets of efficiency, they’re pipelines to our psyches . With thepredicted explosion of wearables(more contained thanearly evangelistsforecasted) and quantified self apps, they're also (data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes – sleeping, eating, procreating (or trying to avoid it) – and a means of outsourcing our worries about them. As Anne Helen Petersenwritesfor BuzzFeed:

“In their capacity to tell users what to do — or simply do itforthem — these devices exploit thus our collective weariness with the decisions that structure a typical day: Can I have this cookie with lunch? Do I need to bring a tampon to work? Am I doing these squats correctly, what’s the best workout playlist,I feel off, what the hell is wrong with me?Just think how much time you could save if you weren’t thinking elliptically about whether or not you should shell out the $50 co-pay to go to Urgent Care. In their own advertisements, these devices promise to save you from worry (about your aging parents, about your slouching back) so that you may live lifefreefrom technology.”

But isn’t being worry-free as a result of wearable tech dependence, well, worrisome?

Watch thefeatures videofor the Apple Watch and try not to be just a little bit creeped out at its potential applications. Try also to refrain from wondering if this is not Apple’s foray into the wearables market but a clever marketing campaign for a news series of Black Mirror. Jony Ive’s soothing yet oddly robotic voiceover would be equally at home in each.

Ah, yes,Black Mirror. New to many of us on this side of the pond thanks to Netflix, this dark British series from Charlie Brooker is unsettling because of how close it is to present day reality. Focused on how technology exacerbates and enables our worst instincts as humans, it presents a view of the near future that's plausible. A service that sifts through a dead loved one's digital footprint to create a convincing simulacrum you can chat with via text or talk to on the phone? The convergence of YouTube, political blackmail and high-profile hostage situations? The former is probably in stealth development right now and the latter seems all but inevitable, especially after the Sony hacking. The tech we celebrate today could pave the way for our downfall tomorrow is the show's message and it’sone that’s resonating.

As tech becomes more intimate (the Apple Watch lets you listen to another user’s heartbeat, for example), do our doubts about how we rely on it and how Faustian ourconvenience for access bargainis become more pressing? Does the fact we’re now the platform on which devices operate (instead of devices providing us with a platform) make a difference? For every trendpieceabout the phone stacking game, forevery first-person narrativeruminating on how a tech sabbatical affected the author’s outlook, for everycomedic musingon the addictive nature of FitBit activity measures, there’s also nugget like this from Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber'sThe Art of Time:

"I learned that the writer Jean-Louis Bory, who also wore this latest device, said to a friend, shortly before committing suicide: 'This watch you see is my death.' I had the same feeling going back to my Singapore hotel. On my wrist, time no longer turned around, it frittered away. Each second sent the preceding into the void, and me along with it. The illusion of circular time came to an end; unrelentingly, linear time clutched me by the arm."